April 2012 – Paralysis/death surge – A new study from India denies that paralytic disease has been absent in that country for the last year as many would infer from the WHO statement that there have been no new cases of polio there since Jan 13, 2011. The fact is that toxins and a multitude of other pathogens and factors can cause acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) as well as polio virus. A 2000 study in Epidemiologic Reviews devotes thirteen pages to the differential diagnosis of AFP in thirty or more paralyzing conditions and countless sub-types and describes it as a “clinical emergency”.
Referring to 1997 and 1999 publications, the study notes that, “in the absence of wild virus-induced poliomyelitis, the acute demyelinating form of Guillain-Barré syndrome accounts for at least 50 percent of AFP cases globally, followed in frequency by paralytic non-polio enterovirus [virus which thrives mainly in the digestive tract] infection, the motor axonal form of Guillain-Barré syndrome, transverse neuritis, and acute transverse myelitis.” It states: “Nonpolio enteroviruses have been associated with polio-like paralytic disease, frequently accompanied by other clinical syndromes, such as asceptic meningitis, hand-foot-and mouth disease, and acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis.” Enteroviruses include coxsackieviruses A and B, echoviruses and enteroviruses 70 and 71. The study notes that, “Muscle weakness and wasting associated with enterovirus 70 is usually severe and permanent.” and that, during a severe Bulgarian epidemic of central nervous system disease in 1975, “Of 705 patients infected with enterovirus 71 in Bulgaria, 149 (21 percent) developed paralysis, and 44 (29 percent) of those persons died. Young persons under 5 years of age were most frequently affected.”
Contrast those stats and descriptions with the statement that, “When nonimmune persons are exposed to wild poliovirus, inapparent infection is the most frequent outcome (72 percent)…Only 1/1,000 to 1/100 infected individuals develop paralytic disease…the case fatality rate is generally 5-10 percent.” And the dreaded ‘iron lung’ of the past? In The Autoimmune Epidemic, Douglas Kerr MD, PhD states: “I founded and continue to direct the Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis (TM) Center, the only center in the world dedicated to developing new therapies for this paralyzing autoimmune disorder. Increasingly, I see more and more patients are being felled by this devastating disorder. Infants as young as five months old can get TM and some are left permanently paralyzed and dependent upon a ventilator to breathe. Currently, my colleagues at Johns Hopkins Hospital and I hear about or treat hundreds of new cases every year.”
The newly published Indian study by Vashisht and Puliyel recounts that, “in 2005, a fifth of the cases of non-polio AFP in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) were followed up after 60 days. 35.2% were found to have residual paralysis and 8.5% had died…Sathyamata examined data from the following year and showed that children who were identified with non-polio AFP were at more than twice the risk of dying than those with wild polio infection.” Furthermore, “Data from India on polio control over 10 years, available from the National Polio Surveillance Project …shows that the non-polio AFP rate increases in proportion to the number of polio vaccines doses received in each area. Nationally, the non-polio AFP rate is now 12 times higher than expected. In the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which have pulse polio rounds nearly every month, the non-polio AFP rate is 25- and 35-fold higher than the international norms. …In 2011, an additional 47, 500 children were newly paralysed in the year, over and above the standard 2/100,000 non-polio AFP that is generally accepted as the norm. …These findings point to the need for a critical appraisal to find the factors contributing to the increase…perhaps looking at the influence of strain shifts of entero-pathogens induced by the vaccine given practically once every month.”
And, of course the stats comparing rates of non-polio AFP with rates of polio AFP would be even lower except for the fact that the live virus oral polio vaccine can cause polio. A 1991 Lancet study is titled, ‘Outbreak of paralytic poliomyelitis in Oman; evidence for widespread transmission among fully vaccinated children’. In his book, Vaccine Safety Manual, Neil Miller explains, “In 1993, Dr Radu Crainic of the Pasteur Institute, discovered that strains of the polio virus have the ability to spontaneously recombine with themselves and create new strains. Crainic showed that if you vaccinate a child with strains 1, 2, and 3, you can produce a new strain, strain 4 out of the child’s stool. Crainic concluded that the polio vaccine creates favorable conditions contributing to the evolution of viral “recombinations”. … In October 2000, virologist Hiromu Yoshida of Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo reported finding a new infectious polio virus in Japanese rivers and sewage. Genetic sequencing confirmed that the virus had mutated from the polio vaccine and regained much of its original virulence. According to Yoshida, it poses a “persistent environmental threat”.
Persistent indeed! Table 4, pg 3 of the latest bulletin from the Indian National Polio Surveillance Project shows detections of wild polio virus and vaccine type polio viruses found in AFP samples tested by seven laboratories. During 2011, only one sample contained the wild virus; a total of 2468 samples contained one of the three vaccine type viruses, 714 had a mixture of vaccine type viruses, and 7 had vaccine derived polio virus (VDPV), ie virus which had originated from the vaccine but had mutated.
To top that off, Vashisht and Puliyel inform us that, “in 2002 scientists had synthesized a chemical called poliovirus in a test tube with the empirical formula C332,652H492,388N98,240131,196P7,50152,340. It has been demonstrated that by positioning the atoms in sequence, a particle can emerge with all the properties required for its proliferation and survival in nature. Wimmer writes that the test-tube synthesis of poliovirus has wiped out any possibility of eradicating poliovirus in the future.”
Of course, instead of switching attention to the pressing non-polio AFP problem, very keen vaccine proponents might suggest continuation of polio vaccination using the Salk killed virus vaccine, the one used in Canada and other western countries. But that too would be very problematic. The Epidemiologic Reviews study referred to earlier states that, “several factors have been shown to increase the risk of acquiring paralytic manifestations, including intramuscular injections…The term “provocation paralysis” describes the enhanced risk of paralytic manifestations that follows intramuscular injection, and it occurs when inflammation in muscle coincides with poliovirus infection; entry of poliovirus to nerve endings in the muscle is facilitated, and paralysis occurs 4-30 days later.” Concerning poliomyelitis, the 1982 Merck Manual states: “Primary multiplication of the virus occurs in the pharynx and intestinal tract…Factors predisposing to serious neurologic involvement include increasing age, recent tonsillectomy or inoculations”. As an aside, since intramuscular injections “increase the risk of acquiring paralytic manifestations”, perhaps these have contributed to the cases of Transverse Myelitis which Dr Kerr has seen in patients “as young as five months old”, patients who probably had been injected with polio vaccine and many others according to recommended schedules.
Apart from the risk of polio or other AFP it’s questionable that injection of Salk vaccine could prevent infection with polio virus (wild or otherwise) if it happened to materialize. That vaccine lacks the immune stimulating effects of adjuvant and live virus. In fact, immunity to polio is most easily and effectively achieved in situations where youngsters are exposed to the wild virus due to poor sanitation. Injections of polio vaccine bypass the pharynx and digestive tract where “primary multiplication of the virus occurs”, causes inflammation and, especially in babies and toddlers, allows easy access to the brain. A much more reliable and less risky strategy would be to strengthen gut immunity by breastfeeding infants and toddlers and fortifying older children with highly nutritious diets.
Unknown to most, grossly inaccurate statistics prop up the popular belief that vaccines were the reason polio disappeared from the Western Hemisphere by 1991. In Canada, a major example is the Dominion Bureau of Statistics’ ‘Poliomyelitis Trends, 1958. This official bulletin reported the few cases of paralytic polio only; it noted that the much more prevalent non-paralytic cases had been renamed meningitis following recommendation of same by the Dominion Council of Health in 1958. In a 2004 article in which he describes the 1954 Salk Polio Vaccine field trials, statistician Paul Meier remarks that, “the polio study was the most elaborate trial that was ever done, and you had to do it that way because polio was very scarce. …physicians reported the cases they thought were polio…Now, about half those cases were probably not polio at all…the results were consistent, more total cases and more paralytic cases in the control group.” [!] But by 1960, five years after nation-wide polio vaccination was introduced, viral testing of stool samples was required for determination of polio cases, not just guesswork. A similar pattern occurred in developing countries: statistics used to justify the introduction of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative were collected from ‘lameness surveys’ which used inconsistent methods of diagnosis and ignored the possibility of non-polio forms of AFP. Once routine use of polio vaccine began, much stricter criteria for diagnoses were required.
The twenty-four year struggle known as the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has consumed untold man/woman years of time and effort and multiple billions of dollars of funds. India’s Pulse Polio Initiative to eradicate polio resulted from a $0.02 billion grant from overseas offered as a carrot to entice it to begin the program. It is shameful that, since the program’s inception in 1994, India itself – one of the world’s poorer nations still needing upgrades to basic public health requirements such as sanitation and clean drinking water – has found it necessary to infuse over $2.5 billion more to continue the program to date. Celebrating the 107th anniversary of Rotary International on Feb 23, 2012, Pakistani Rotarians joined their comrades worldwide in dramatizing their contributions to polio eradication. As lights emblazoned Karachi’s historic Frere Hall with the Rotary insignia and the message, “END POLIO NOW”, Pakistan’s ‘Tribune’ news was preparing a report titled, Crippled for life: Two children get polio, as father blames vaccine.
Vashisht and Puliyel have remarked, “Caplan, in his essay entitled ‘Is disease eradication ethical?’, has noted that eradication may be public health’s greatest rhetorical weapon and unmatched in its ability to command funding, popular support, the attention of politicians and positive media coverage. The stakes involved portend relief forever as well as the ability to relax humanity’s guard against the disease.” The authors point out that the huge diversion of India’s limited funds to polio eradication has taken away from otherwise possible national health initiatives of much greater priority. In his book, The Health of Nations: True causes of sickness and wellbeing, Leonard Sagan MD expresses his view that resistance to disease overall may be more important than the eradication of any one specific infectious disease. The survival of humans beyond the eras of pre-vaccine plagues such as the bubonic plague and their survival through the era of scarlet fever, an infection without a vaccine, appear to attest to this.
References and Further Reading:
Eradicate polio “eradication”!
Polio and Acute Flaccid Paralysis
Polio Index: What part did vaccines play in the eradication of polio [in the Americas]?
